The case of the death and resurrection of the Russian journalist A. Babchenko in Kiev is even more surreal than it seemed so far. According to Ukrainian sources and court documents the whole hoax was part of an attempt to raid and take over a private company. High levels of the Ukrainian security services staged the whole affair not only to blame Russia but also for someone’s personal gain.In 2017 Arkady Babchenko, despised in Russia for his open hostility against its people, came via Israel to the Ukraine. He was welcome in Kiev for his anti-Russian position. Babchenko found a job with ATR, a Crimean Tatar TV station. The fine-print on the ATR websitesays that it “was supported by the Media Development Fund of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine”.

On May 29 the Ukrainian government claimed that Babchenko had been assassinated. As usual the death of a journalist hostile to Russia was used by NATO aligned media to blame Russia, the Kremlin and Putin. That there was zero evidence that Russia was involved did not matter at all. A photo of the allegedly killed Babchenko laying in his blood emerged.

Crisis actor Arkady Babchenko at work

The very next day the General Prosecutor of the Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko and the head of the National Security Service (SBU) Vasyl Grytsak (also written as Hrytsak) held a press conference and presented a very alive and happy Arkady Babchenko. He had not been shot at all. The whole hoax, it was explained, was launched to find the people behind an alleged assassination campaign originating in Russia. In this official version the Russians hired some Ukrainian “operator” who then hired the “killer” to assassinate Babchenko. The hired killer told the police about it and the hoax of Babchenko’s death was staged to find the culprits behind the plot.

All those western “journalists” who had believed Ukrainian government claims without any evidence and wrote unfounded accusations against Russia were not amused. The Ukrainian government exposed them as the mere propaganda tools and fools they are. The “journalist” Babchenko himself, interviewed by Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky, comes off as a naive and rather dim light.

Yesterday the “hired killer”, one Alexey Tsymbalyuk, wentpublic. He is a Ukrainian nationalist who had fought against the the Russia supported entities in eastern Ukraine. He has since become an orthodox priest.

via Alec Luhn Would an operator for Russia hire an Ukrainian nationalist and priest who had fought Russian aligned entities in east-Ukraine to kill a well known anti-Russian figure? Hmmm.The SBU did not confirm that Alexey Tsymbalyuk is the “killer” but Ukrainian media seem to believe him.

The General Prosecutor of the Ukraine named one Boris German (also written Herman) as the Russian paid “operator” who had hired Alexey Tsymbalyuk to kill Arkady Babchenko.

Boris German denies that he worked for Russia.

According to Strana.ua (Russian, machine translation), Jewgenij Solodko, the attorney of the accused “operator” Boris German, rejects the accusations against his client. Boris German (the man) is co-owner of a Ukrainian joint venture with the German (the country) company Schmeisser (also written Schmyser or Shmyser) which produces optics for sniper rifles. German’s company had good relation with his customers at the Ukrainian defense ministry. He had also supported the “anti-terror-operations” of Ukrainian nazi formations against the “Russians” in the east.

The attorney says that over the last six month German’s apartment and company had been searched by the SBU several times. The SBU, he alleges, shook German down for some $70,000. The SBU, he writes, had not presented any evidence of any Russian involvement. The attorney denies, according to the Strava.ua report, that his client had any connection with Russians.

Meduza’sreport on German’s court appearance presents a slightly different version:

The man charged with trying to organize the murder of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko announced in court on Thursday that he was acting as a Ukrainian counterintelligence agent.German says he started cooperating with Ukrainian counterintelligence after he was approached by an “old acquaintance” living in Moscow who “works at a Putin foundation, organizing unrest in Ukraine.” German says he was told to learn more about the flow of Russian money into Ukraine funding certain politicians and “terrorist groups.”

According to reports in the Ukrainian media, German said his acquaintance in Russia is named either Vyacheslav Pivovarkin or Vyacheslav Pivovarnik. It’s still unclear if German accuses this person of ordering Babchenko’s murder.

It is curious that the attorney makes claims which are partly contradicting those made by his client.

The killing, the killer and the operator who hired the killer were all fakes. Arkady Babchenko, Alexey Tsymbalyuk and Boris German all worked with the Ukrainian security service. All seem to have anti-Russian credentials.

But wait, the mess gets even deeper.

In our piece yesterday we laid out how the Ukrainian plot and other recent incidents were arranged to discredit Russia just in time for the start of the soccer World cup in Russia. It turns out that this was only one aspect of the hapless plot.

Bloomberg writer Leonid Bershidsky points to a piece by one Volodymyr Boiko, a “parachuting instructor in Kiev”, who describes (in Ukrainian) an even darker level of the story.

Just do not laugh. The imitation of the “murder” of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, which caused such anger in international diplomatic and human rights circles, was a way to resolve the corporate dispute between the founders of the Ukrainian-German joint venture “Schmayser”, whose head Boris Herman, SBU head Grytsak and the Prosecutor General Lutsenko was declared the customer of murder and terrorist, acting on the tasks of Russian special services.

The court papers show that the whole affair started in February 2016 and was about an attempt to take over a company. Since 2016 German, the executive director of the company, was fighting off creditors including the founder of the company. These creditors alleged that German, or the company he led, had not paid back some loans and demanded to take over the company to cover their losses. German argued that the loan had been repaid and produced receipts. The creditors said that they were counterfeit. Several cases and many motions were filed and the whole court case ran for nearly two years. German seems to have won it.

Such attempt to take over a company via fraudulent court claims have been a distinct feature of the “wild east” after the Soviet Union broke apart. In Russia, in the Ukraine and elsewhere fraudulent legal cases, physical raids, intimidation and murder were regular means to grab industrial assets. As such the German case is nothing remarkable. But its further development into an absurd hoax makes it special.

As their attempt to raid German’s company through a court campaign over minor loans failed, the raiders, with SBU chief Grytsak seemingly behind them, thought out a different way to go after German. Hence the Babchenko hoax and the “operator” allegations.

Volodymyr Boiko continues (machine translated):

But “getting” Herman through the police his opponents could not, because judges consistently refused to choose a precautionary measure due to the insignificance of the crime. And then the order was taken by the Department of Counterintelligence of the SBU. Apparently, it is a primitive provocation directed at the arrest of the head of the joint venture “Schmyser” in order to take away the share of the authorized capital of the enterprise, which he, according to the opponents, owns unlawfully.

The story Boiko tells is consistent with the claims German’s attorney made about long ongoing SBU raids of German’s apartment and company. The court paper Boiko cites seem valid. It likely is a real part of the Babchenko story, but it still may not be the whole truth.

The staged murder, with a fake cadaver, a fake killer and a fake operator behind it, was endorsed (video) at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government.

“Western” media used the hoax to accuse and defame Russia and its president Putin without the slightest supporting evidence. That alone is already a serious mess and reveals the utter failure of “western” journalism and media.

The background of the case, a takeover of a company by illegal means, demonstrates the total social failure of the “western” coup in Ukraine. The worst of the worst, robber barons like Poroschenko and criminal bankers like Kolomoisky went on to steal billions of “western” aid while the Ukrainian state fell apart. Defying the courts, the power of the state is secretly abused for slapstick worthy plots to grab up industrial assets.

The victims are the people of Ukraine who were robbed of their means and their security. Russia, the permanent boogeyman of the “west”, is least to blame for it.

Was he talking about Jews, or wasn’t he?

Elon Musk is being accused of anti-Semitism by some social media users after the Tesla chief’s Twitter response to a journalist amid a growing conflict with the media.

The founder of an online publication The Online, Joshua Topolsky, asked Musk: “Do you think it’s in the interest of powerful people to A: support a free press that exposes their lies, or B: tear it down so their lies are easier to tell?”

Musk responded: “Who do you think *owns* the press? Hello.”

The entrepreneur was non-specific and opted not to answer dozens of follow up questions left by enraged Twitter users. On Sunday, NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who was present at the onset of the brawl, tweeted that Musk’s comment attracted lots of anti-Semitic responses, calling on the Tesla boss to condemn them.

Last week, Musk declared war on the media, pledging to launch a website that would allow people to rate the credibility of journalists, editors and publications. The businessman planned to call the new pet project “Pravda” – the Russian word for “truth.”

Later, Musk tweeted that he had failed to buy the domain to register a website of the same name. While commenting on that fact, the entrepreneur confused Ukraine and Russia and got a barrage of angry replies saying “Ukraine is not Russia!” in his timeline.

The businessman finally purchased the domain “Pravduh.com.” The step was also met with some indignation as tweeter users asked why he hadn’t chosen Pravda.org.

Musk’s growing frustration with the media comes amid recent reports about braking problems of Tesla’s Model 3 sedan. Moreover, in April Bloomberg reported that Tesla was losing $6,500 a minute and it could fail before the end of the year. There has also been a proposal to unseat him and remove his relative from Tesla’s board.

We can no longer trust data and conclusions being published as impartial by institutions that were once trustworthy.

When someone says they “know” what’s happening on the ground in Syria, how can we assess the validity of their claim to knowledge, i.e. their claim to “know” “facts” or (gasp) “truth”?

When someone says they “know” the U.S. economy is growing and unemployment is at record lows, what is the basis of their claim to knowledge?

Before you tell me what you “know,” tell me your sources. We all know how this works nowadays: the sources are rigged or gamed to support the pre-selected narrative.

In “fake news,” the sources are designed to appear legitimate via official-sounding institutional titles for the source organizations and human “experts” / researchers, and the data that’s presented to support the “fake news” is also designed to be indistinguishable from legitimate data.

The cursory consumer of such content will be inclined to grant the institution, source and data as equal in legitimacy to other accepted sources. For example, if we read that the United Nations Labor Information Council has collected data showing the U.S. unemployment rate is actually 7.2% rather than the official 3.9%, the invocation of the UN and the precision of the data point suggests a legitimate source and data base.

But it’s “fake news;” there is no United Nations Labor Information Council (at least not to my knowledge).

Official sources have learned that the most effective way to propagate the sanctioned narratives is to rig or game the data and/or its interpretation. Thus the bailouts of the U.S. “too big to fail” financial institutions in 2008-09 were purposefully obscured; it took independent researchers to assemble all the bailout guarantees and publish the staggering total of over $16 trillion.

Official data is massaged to promote the official narrative. This is well-known to anyone who digs into the actual mechanics of the adjustments made to the raw data. For example, to mask real-world inflation, big-ticket expenses such as healthcare are minimized as a percentage of the basket of expenses being measured, and hedonic adjustments reduce the sticker price we actually pay.

The unemployment rate of 3.9% is based on excluding 95 million working-age residents from the labor pool. Many of these people are indeed unavailable for work, but millions have been categorized as “discouraged” and thus are not counted as being in the work force.

In other words, the process of rigging and gaming “facts” to support a pre-determined narrative is identical for both “fake news” and “official news.” When researchers compared electricity consumption in China with the official growth rate, a vast discrepancy appeared: electrical consumption, a reliable indicator of economic activity, lagged the official growth rate.

The official response was to stop reporting electrical consumption data or rig the numbers to match the official narrative.

Now that the loss of trust in official reporting of data is widespread (due to the obviousness of the rigging / gaming / manipulation), the institutions tasked with generating belief in the sanctioned narratives are accusing anyone questioning the officially sanctioned data or narratives of issuing “fake news.”

The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife: as institutions gin up ever more dubious “evidence” that all is well with the status quo, the line between “official news” and “fake news” has effectively dissolved.

We are now being bombarded with engineered data from supposedly legitimate sources that’s explicitly designed to support insider rackets or profiteering cartel. A prime example is medical/pharmaceutical research data, which is increasingly funded by self-serving corporations or institutions with the explicit goal of finding (or rigging) evidence supporting some claim of efficacy that is highly profitable to the owners of the medication/genetic material.

In other words, we can no longer trust data and conclusions being published as impartial by institutions that were once trustworthy as these institutions become politicized or funded by corporations whose sole goal is to maximize profits by any means available.

Much of this legerdemain is statistical and therefore difficult for laypersons to analyze or assess. Despite the educational industry’s focus on STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, math), relatively few citizens seem equipped to read the results of a pharmaceutical Stage III trial (human subject trials for the efficacy and risks of a new medication/treatment) or scientific paper that supports some overarching policy or a “headline number” such as GDP or unemployment.

A skeptical reader naturally looks for weaknesses such as small sample size, wide margins of error, various assumptions made when eliminating data samples, and so on.

The general lack of interest and/or ability to make even a rudimentary critical assessment of the officially sanctioned evidence and narratives plays right into the hands of those engineering the evidence.

But the Internet is messing everything up by providing a universal forum for skeptics to publish critical assessments of officially sanctioned evidence. The spectrum of critics is wide, ranging from those promoting improbable theories backed by little substantiated evidence to those who have conducted rigorous critiques that interested parties can critique.

Such a forum requires a skeptical populace with critical-thinking skills and the willingness to ask cui bono–to whose benefit? As institutions are politicized and dissenters are marginalized and profit-maximizing organizations fund their own self-serving research, it falls to the citizenry to sort the wheat from the politicized. self-serving chaff.

Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120 people, mostly women and children. Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. But there is not proof, none whatsoever.

The US rush to conflict attempts to sidestep any meaningful investigation into the attack, fitting a larger pattern of Washington and its allies using baseless chemical weapon allegations for wars of aggression stretching back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The discredited White Helmets – a “rescue” group only operating in areas held by “rebels” who routinely decapitate, including children, set fire to people and commit numerous unspeakable acts – have produced a video of an apparent chemical attack on 7th April.

On Tuesday, April 10th, the U.S. and France were sending missiles, ships, planes and soldiers for an invasion of Syria, which is defended by Russia; and two alternative draft proposals were presented to the U.N. Security Council for authorizing an expert investigation to be done into the alleged April 7th chemical attack in Douma in Syria, which alleged event the U.S. and France allege to be the justification for their planned invasion.

The Trump Administration is backing a new technology for the genetic manipulation of plants and even animals with no intend to supervise or regulate against possible dangers. If left unchecked, it could open a Pandora’s Box of dangers to human health for generations.

Only the Russians have allowed us to hear the actual voice of Yulia Skripal, in that recorded conversation with her cousin. So the one thing we know for certain is that, at the very first opportunity she had, she called back to her cousin in Russia to let her know what is going on. If you can recall, until the Russians released that phone call, the British authorities were still telling lies that Sergei was in a coma and Yulia herself in a serious condition.

Attention bloggers, this means you and I will be monitored under the guise of data collection. Say hi to Uncle Sam.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to compile a database to monitor hundreds of thousands of news outlets and journalists around the world.

Bloomberg Law reports that DHS is looking for a contractor to help build the database and keep track of more than 290,000 news sources, collecting data about each source’s “sentiment,” influence, language, and circulation. The data would allow the agency to identify “any and all” coverage related to a particular event, DHS officials told Bloomberg Law.

The tracking would apply to online, print, broadcast, cable, and radio sources — essentially, any journalist, editor, blogger, or correspondent deemed a possible “media influencer” could be included. DHS also wants to follow social media activity and hopes to be able to instantly translate coverage in more than 100 languages to English to add to the database.

RT.com

The Pentagon helps Hollywood to make money and, in turn, Hollywood churns out effective propaganda for the brutal American war machine.

The US has the largest military budget in the world, spending over $611 billion – far larger than any other nation on Earth. The US military also has at their disposal the most successful propaganda apparatus the world has ever known… Hollywood.

Since their collaboration on the first Best Picture winner ‘Wings’ in 1927, the US military has used Hollywood to manufacture and shape its public image in over 1,800 films and TV shows. Hollywood has, in turn, used military hardware in their films and TV shows to make gobs and gobs of money. A plethora of movies like ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘Captain Philips,’ and even blockbuster franchises like ‘Transformers’ and Marvel, DC and X-Men superhero movies have agreed to cede creative control in exchange for use of US military hardware over the years.

In order to obtain cooperation from the Department of Defense (DoD), producers must sign contracts that guarantee a military approved version of the script makes it to the big screen. In return for signing away creative control, Hollywood producers save tens of millions of dollars from their budgets on military equipment, service members to operate the equipment, and expensive location fees.

Capt. Russell Coons, director of the Navy Office of Information West, told Al Jazeera what the military expects for their cooperation: “We’re not going to support a program that disgraces a uniform or presents us in a compromising way.”

Phil Strub, the DOD chief Hollywood liaison, says the guidelines are clear. “If the filmmakers are willing to negotiate with us to resolve our script concerns, usually we’ll reach an agreement. If not, filmmakers are free to press on without military assistance.”

In other words, the Department of Defense is using taxpayer money to pick favorites. The DOD has no interest in nuance, truth or – God forbid – artistic expression; only in insidious jingoism that manipulates public opinion to their favor. This is chilling when you consider that the DOD is able to use its financial leverage to quash dissenting films it deems insufficiently pro-military or pro-American in any way.

The danger of the DOD-Hollywood alliance is that Hollywood is incredibly skilled at making entertaining, pro-war propaganda. The DOD isn’t getting involved in films like ‘Iron Man,’ ‘X-Men,’ ‘Transformers’ or ‘Jurassic Park III’ for fun. They are doing so because it’s an effective way to psychologically program Americans, particularly young Americans, not just to adore the military, but to worship militarism. This ingrained love of militarism has devastating real-world effects.

Lawrence Suid, author of ‘Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film’told Al Jazeera, “I was teaching the history of the Vietnam War, and I couldn’t explain how we got into Vietnam. I could give the facts, the dates, but I couldn’t explain why. And when I was getting my film degrees, it suddenly occurred to me that the people in the US had never seen the US lose a war, and when President Johnson said we can go into Vietnam and win, they believed him because they’d seen 50 years of war movies that were positive.”

As Suid points out, generations of Americans had been raised watching John Wayne valiantly storm the beaches of Normandy in films like ‘The Longest Day,’ and thus were primed to be easily manipulated into supporting any US military adventure because they were conditioned to believe that the US is always the benevolent hero and inoculated against doubt.

This indoctrinated adoration of a belligerent militarism, conjured by Hollywood blockbusters, also resulted in Americans being willfully misled into supporting a farce like the 2003 Iraq War. The psychological conditioning for Iraq War support was built upon hugely successful films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998), directed by Steven Spielberg, and ‘Black Hawk Down’ (2001), produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, that emphasized altruistic American militarism. Spielberg and Bruckheimer are two Hollywood heavyweights considered by the DoD to be their most reliable collaborators.

Another example of the success of the DoD propaganda program was the pulse-pounding agitprop of the Tom Cruise blockbuster ‘Top Gun’ (1986). The movie, produced by Bruckheimer, was a turning point in the DoD-Hollywood relationship, as it came amid a string of artistically successful, DoD-opposed, ‘anti-war’ films, like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ which gave voice to America’s post-Vietnam crisis of confidence. ‘Top Gun’ was the visual representation of Reagan’s flag-waving optimism, and was the Cold War cinematic antidote to the “Vietnam Syndrome”.

‘Top Gun,’ which could not have been made without massive assistance from the DoD, was a slick, two-hour recruiting commercial that coincided with a major leap in public approval ratings for the military. With a nadir of 50 percent in 1980, by the time the Gulf War started in 1991, public support for the military had spiked to 85 percent.

Since Top Gun, the DoD propaganda machine has resulted in a current public approval for the military of 72 percent, with Congress at 12 percent, the media at 24 percent, and even Churches at only 40 percent. The military is far and away the most popular institution in American life. Other institutions would no doubt have better approval ratings if they too could manage and control their image in the public sphere.

It isn’t just the DoD that uses the formidable Hollywood propaganda apparatus to its own end… the CIA does as well, working with films to enhance its reputation and distort history.

For example, as the ‘War on Terror’ raged, the CIA deftly used ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ (2007) as a disinformation vehicle to revise their sordid history with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and to portray themselves as heroic and not nefarious.

The CIA also surreptitiously aided the film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012), and used it as a propaganda tool to alter history and convince Americans that torture works.

The case for torture presented in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was originally made from 2001 to 2010 on the hit TV show ‘24,’ which had support from the CIA as well. That pro-CIA and pro-torture narrative continued in 2011 with the Emmy-winning show ‘Homeland,’ created by the same producers as ‘24,’ Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa.

A huge CIA-Hollywood success story was Best Picture winner ‘Argo’ (2012), which ironically is the story of the CIA teaming up with Hollywood. The CIA collaborated with the makers of ‘Argo’ in order to pervert the historical record and elevate their image.

The fact that this propaganda devil’s bargain between the DoD/CIA and Hollywood takes place in the self-declared Greatest Democracy on Earth™ is an irony seemingly lost on those in power who benefit from it, and also among those targeted to be indoctrinated by it, entertainment consumers, who are for the most part entirely oblivious to it.

If America is the Greatest Democracy in the World™, why are its military and intelligence agencies so intent on covertly misleading its citizens, stifling artistic dissent, and obfuscating the truth? The answer is obvious… because in order to convince Americans that their country is The Greatest Democracy on Earth™, they must be misled, artistic dissent must be stifled and the truth must be obfuscated.

In the wake of the American defeat in the Vietnam war, cinema flourished by introspectively investigating the deeper uncomfortable truths of that fiasco in Oscar-nominated films like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ‘Coming Home,’ ‘The Deer Hunter,’ ‘Platoon,’ ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ all made without assistance from the DoD.

The stultifying bureaucracy of America’s jingoistic military agitprop machine is now becoming more successful at suffocating artistic endeavors in their crib. With filmmaking becoming ever more corporatized, it is an uphill battle for directors to maintain their artistic integrity in the face of cost-cutting budgetary concerns from studios.

In contrast to post-Vietnam cinema, after the unmitigated disaster of the US invasion of Iraq and the continuing quagmire in Afghanistan, there has been no cinematic renaissance, only a steady diet of mendaciously patriotic, DoD-approved, pro-war drivel like ‘American Sniper’ and ‘Lone Survivor.’ Best Picture winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ (2008), shot with no assistance from the DoD, was the lone exception that successfully dared to portray some of the ugly truths of America’s Mesopotamian misadventure.

President Eisenhower once warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”

Eisenhower’s prescient warning should have extended to the military industrial entertainment complex of the DoD/CIA-Hollywood alliance, which has succeeded in turning Americans into a group of uniformly incurious and militaristic zealots.

America is now stuck in a perpetual pro-war propaganda cycle, where the DoD/CIA and Hollywood conspire to indoctrinate Americans to be warmongers and, in turn, Americans now demand more militarism from their entertainment and government. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The DoD/CIA-Hollywood propaganda alliance guarantees Americans will blindly support more future failed wars and will be willing accomplices in the deaths of millions more people across the globe.

Michael McCaffrey, for RT

Michael McCaffrey is a freelance writer, film critic and cultural commentator. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he runs his acting coaching and media consulting business. mpmacting.com/blog/

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.